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Thurlow Weed

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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THURLOW WEED (1797-1882), American journalist and politician, was born in Cairo, Greene county, New York, on the 15th of November 1797. He began to earn his own living the age of eight. From 1811 to 1818 he worked as an apprentice and journeyman printer in Onondaga Hollow, Utica, Auburn, Cooperstown, Albany and New York City. His first independent enterprises, the Republican Agriculturist, established at Norwich, N.Y., in 1818, and the Onondaga County Republican, established at Manlius, N.Y., in 1821, proving unsuccessful, he became editor of the Rochester Telegraph in 1822. Entering politics as an opponent of the Democratic machine, which he termed the Albany Regency, Weed was in 1824 elected to the Assembly on the John Quincy Adams ticket, serving for a single session (1825). Two years later, during the excitement over the disappearance of William Morgan (see Anti-Masonic Party), he retired from the Telegraph and threw himself with enthusiasm into the attack on the Masonic order, editing for a time the Anti-Masonic Enquirer. In 1830 he established and became editor of the Albany Evening Journal, which he controlled for thirty-five years. Supporting the Whigs and later the Republicans, it was one of the most influential anti-slavery papers in the north - east; and Thurlow Weed himself became a considerable force in politics. In 1863 he retired from the Journal and settled in New York City. In 1867 he assumed editorial control of the Commercial Advertiser, but was soon compelled to resign on account of ill-health. He died in New York City on the 22nd of November 1882.

See The Life of Thurlow Weed (vol. i., Autobiography, edited by his daughter, Harriet A. Weed; vol. ii., Memoir, by his grandson, Thurlow Weed Barnes, Boston and New York, 1884). The Memoir is especially full for the period 1850-1867.